Chris Hughes Quotes

I'm dying to go to India... because the culture seems so vastly different from what I'm used to in the States. I would love to do some yoga there. And be amongst people who are so different than myself. There's so much you can learn from people who grew up in a different environment.

Going through different places, I stopped through Dubai and stayed there overnight. There I had an ultra-culture shock.

Going to Liberia really changed a lot for me. I didn't realize what was happening on the same planet. My understanding that in the world everything is interconnected really grew - to go to one of the poorest countries from one of the richest countries in the world. It was two worlds apart.

I never thought I'd have the opportunity to visit another culture.

I think that one of the main privileges of what I do, which I am just starting to learn, is to have the ability to travel all over the world and experience different cultures.

It was very liberating, living in a foreign country, a place where everything was new and strange - the food, the customs, the climate, everything.

It is fantastic to be found in a foreign country.

After college, I wanted to learned about myself as an American, so I left the United States and went to Japan.

I took a gap year myself after high school and worked on a farm near Lyon, France. I stayed with the Vallet family, picked and packed fruit, and discovered that red wine can be a breakfast drink. That led to further travel as a university student.

I was first in Sydney in 1993, and have been a few times since then. For someone who didn't know Australia, it came as a shock how intelligent, interesting and funny the people were. If I lived there I might see it differently, but as a visitor it was a lot of fun.

In college, I was a researcher/writer for 'Let's Go: Europe,' assigned to Crete and Cyprus. I was supposed to go to England, but at the last minute they transferred me, despite the fact that I spoke not a word of Greek. I learned the very basics, and to this day can say 'oil,' 'vinegar,' and 'boyfriend in America.'

What's the point of being an Australian guy traveling through India if you are going to go to India to meet other Australians?

I would love to travel around the world working for a travel company taking students abroad on cultural immersion trips.

Back in eighth grade, I'd seen nothing but small-town Georgia when I left the U.S. for the first time and went to Hong Kong, Taiwan and Mainland China.

I, made in England, felt excluded, miffed, resistant to the idea of even visiting India, a position of increasing absurdity as, one by one, backpacking friends returned from the place with the standard anecdotal combo of nirvanic epiphany and toilet horror.

We moved to Australia for two years though and that was a little bit tough trying to fit in.

China was the first time I truly felt like an outsider. I fell in love with the process of trying to become intimate with the culture.

I backpacked around the world and went to places like Mexico City and Pakistan, where I'm like, 'Oh. Things aren't quite as good.'

I'm very comfortable in the U.S. and Europe, but I feel completely out of place in the rest of the world, mostly because I never spent time outside the U.S. and Europe until I was in my 30s.

When I went to Australia, I had this feeling, like, 'Wow, this is really a different country.' I think that feeling of genuine foreignness, that this is a very different culture, which is increasingly rare in our globalised world.

When I was 12, we began hosting exchange students from Norway, Sweden, Japan and Spain. I soon realized there was a whole world out there. I was determined to spend my sophomore year in high school abroad. My school taught only Spanish, but I wanted to go to France, and I did.

If I want to go to Europe and get thrashed by the Europeans, that's my business. Every race I lose I learn from and get tougher.

When you go out of your country and meet people, you get a wider perspective.

I think going to another country and being able to evolve past my thinking and what actually went on in America was a little bit different from what athletes experience here in America.

I'd never really travelled before, and when we started going places, like Japan, France, Germany and all over Europe, it's been interesting to see how different cultures work. But to be there playing music makes it so much better.